Hannibal or Why Am I Still Reading This?

Now Hannibal is free and sending Clarice new clues. I am only about half way through right now, and my favorite part is in the letter Hannibal sends Clarice, in which he tells her to look into a skillet. Huh. "Look into the skillet, Clarice. Lean over it and look down. If this were your mothers skillet, and it may well be, I t would hold among its molecules the vibrations of all the conversations held in its presence. All the exchanges, the petty irritations, the deadly revelations, the flat announcements of disaster, the poetry of love...Look into the honest iron and know Clarice, you can be as strong as you wish to be. The most Stable elements, Clarice, appear in the middle of the periodic table, roughly between iron and silver. Between Iron and Silver. I think that is appropriate for you." So, scary book, but it has to be scary. Im honestly not sure if I am going to finish it. I want to, but im not sure I want Hannibal in rummaging around in my mind.

Still Finding Lubchenko

Evans father is 70 years old, classical hard boiled Scottish and a complete hard-***. He doesn’t understand 'kids these days', and refuses to have huge TVs, swimming pools, and vacation houses. "I should mention that my dad does have a vacation home. Sort of. It was more of a tiny shack near Mount Rainier, not that far from Seattle. It wasn’t the kind of vacation home where you sat around the pool sipping frozen cocktails. Instead it was the sort of place where you reclaimed your manhood. My father and I would go up there and spend the entire weekend chopping wood. Some fun. But my dad loved discipline and manly exercise, so that's what we did."

On a side note, Evans father is arrested for supposed murder, and Evan overhears his fathers work partner speaking about setups and stolen viruses. Basically Evan and his friends have to travel through France and Italy to save the world. And the book is very funny. But the characters, and the relationship between Evan and his Father, are the best part.

The Last Hero

The Last Hero takes place in Terry Pratchetts 'Disk World' Universe. Disk World is a world "on the back of four elephants perched on the shell of a giant turtle." because, the advantage of space is that its big enough to hold practically anything, and so it does. The last hero is one of those 'hitchikers guide-esque', cracked out satires that is so far from anything normal or sane that it is amazing the authorcan make connections back to satirize our world, but he does.

I adore Terry Pratchett. 'Good Omens' is my favorite book. The Last Hero is pretty cool. It tells the story of the last hero in Disk World, whose gotten pretty up there in years. "He can remember the good old days of high adventure, when being a hero meant one didn't have to worry about aching backs and lawyers and civilization.
But these days, he cant always remember where he put his teeth." And so our elderly protaganist sets out to end the world in a blaze of glory br returning fire to the gods. Who are completely insane aswell. I have yet to finish 'The Last hero' too, I have a pretty busy spring break ahead of me.

The Once and Future King

I do not have a good reason for reading this fantastic book, but I have two bad ones, so. The first is that I saw the character Magneto reading it in the 'X-men' movie, and the second is that it was available when no other books were, so I started. I expected boring, drawn out, descriptions of moss and and the great grand parents of a side character ( i am not poking any sort of fun at Lord of the Rings, because i could never back that up. This is purely theoretical.) Once and Future King is nothing like that! its exciting, and interesting, and most surprisingly, hilarious.

It reminded me a lot more of the disney adaptation 'The Sword and the Stone' than I ever would have expected. I think they had some of the same jokes, which is too weird, and awesome. I hate that books seem like these big, boring things and 9 times out of 10, their absolutely not, and really every bit as entertaining as TV. Anyway, the plot revolves around young Arthur or 'Wart' meeting and being taught by merlin, the wizard. My favorite part so far (i am no where near finished) is when Arthur meets merlin, and his owl Archimedes. T.H white nails character psychology in only a few words, and i like his outlook on life. So far. (hes not allowed to kill Arthur).

Hannibal (eep)

The book is different from the movie, let me say that. I think the movie focuses on and glorifies Hannibal, while the book is about Clarice. It is not a horror book really, but a mystery-thriller. Really, we discover things along with Clarice, and Hannibal plays a very small part. The author, Thomas Harris, is very good at drawing the reader in and making you feel what Clarice feels. However, this isn’t always such a good thing. As in, I can’t read this book going to bed, and I can’t read it on my own, because it is truly terrifying in parts. Personally, I think Harris went way overboard with descriptions. But I knew the books reputation when I picked it up, so I’m going to move past the whole 'my psyche will never be the same' topic.

Clarice Starling is an investigative agent, and her entire life revolves around her work. A few years before the book takes place, ex psychologist and present-day Serial Killer Hannibal Lector traded her information to aid in catching the murderer 'buffalo bill' in exchange for stories about her child hood. That’s a very important piece of the book; because it showed Clarice things about herself she didn’t know.

Finding Lubchenko

Young Adult Fiction great. Because this is a book that's targeted towards teens without being written and edited to 'teach life lessons' I suppose. This is a very common flaw in YA books, the main characters simply aren’t realistic, and empathizing with a character parents-want-you-to-be-but-that-doesn’t-exist isn’t possible. And I believe its one of the main reasons kids don't read.

'Finding Lubchenko', however, is about a real kid. He wants to do well in school, and he’s bright, but it’s still not happening. He doesn’t want his dad to be disappointed in him, but he can’t resist getting into trouble. And yet, he’s not a completely horrible person. He is without a doubt spoiled, and selfish, and he doesn’t pull a 180 in the end. Onto the plot of the book, Evan, the main character, has an extremely wealthy father who is one of the foremost medical Cancer researchers.

Fight Club

Where do I even begin? I re-read 'Fight club' for the third time this week, and plus the endless pop references to it and the popularity of the movie, I would bet I about know the thing by heart by now. Neither the nihilistic message nor the 'fight' club its self are the invention of the author, Chuck Palahniuk. Fight clubs have existed since the beginning of civilization, and nihilism has its ancient history as well.

Even all the unthinkable anecdotes throughout the story (Tyler splicing pornography into family films, The narrator attending cancer support meetings despite his being cancer free to make himself feel better) Palahniuk has openly admitted are recollections borrowed from his friends and their friends.

However fight club is an incomparable book, its impact and message is incomparable to any other books on its subject, indeed almost any book of the century. This is because of Palahniuk’s ability to discern and translate the feelings of a generation. His mastery of story telling is truly unparalleled in the past half century of writing, and ok, he’s actually really original. I just wanted to point out that it’s his ability to comprehend and communicate through metaphors like "I ran. I ran until my muscles burned and my veins pumped battery acid. Then I ran some more."

The Fountainhead

I'm rereading the Fountainhead. This will be a difficult book blog, because 'The Fountainhead' is one of those books that you really want to see the facial expressions of the person your communicating about it with. Truth is, i like the fountainhead a lot. Yes, the constant push of objectionism gets old quick, but i read the book first when i didn't know about Rand or her philosophy, and i appreciated the book as exceptional characters surviving in fifties society. I don't think there is really any need to get up in arms about Ayn Rand, and i don't want to talk about or participate in her philosophy. Her books, on the other hand.

As far fetched as Objectionism is, Ayn is really good at creating passionate indignation in a girl. Some of her speeches are just flat persuasive. This is partly because she is the queen of logical fallacies. Seriously, sometimes she just flat out lies, but since her work is fiction, and its Howard Roark claiming whatever, not Rand. Obligatory Ayn Rand hate fest '09 behind us, i love this book. I love the characters, who are fleshed out so refreshingly, and the speeches, and her descriptions are amazing. Since I'm not about to summarize the fountain heads entire plot, i will just quote my favorite 2 quotes in the first 2 pages. first, in her description of Howard Roark, who stands at the edge of a cliff over a lake which reflects the sky; "a contemptuous mouth, shut tight, the mouth of an executioner or a saint." that description stayed with me throughout the book, and played a huge role in how i perceived Roark. The other quote is this "He stepped to the edge, raised his arms, and dived down into the sky below."
Now that, that is just pretty.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it." Oh Lord Henry. maybe that's the opiates talking. Dorian Gray is one of my favorite books, definitely my favorite classic. I played at reading it for years until sophomore year, and have now read ti completely 3 times. Its a very important book to read at my age. At any age really, but teenagers and moral ambiguity go particularly well together. The first time i read it, it was because i knew a little about Oscar Wilde's philosophy of aestheticism, and i kind of wanted to be convinced that morals were unnecessary, and that evil could be used as means to an end. At first, 'Dorian Gray' seems to do just that. Until he meets Lord Henry, Dorian has never been tempted to justify sin.

His portrait has just been painted, and his is the picture (pardon the pun) of innocence. Then lord Henry introduces his theories; that all the good humans do is done out of fear of repercussions, and that the only way to stop temptation is to give into to it. Dorian is impressionable and he, of course, loves the idea that sin can be excused and even necessary. perhaps Oscar Wilde wrote this book as he himself felt Dorian's struggle between Henry and society's contrasting ideals. Either way, He writes Lord Henry to be a very persuasive man. I was persuaded, and I though Dorian may never be punished for his sins. He is, of course, punished. His own soul ends up destroying up, much like in the tell tale heart by Poe, he eventually condemns himself. He resolves to destroy the painting which has aged and become cruel in appearance for him, and he sets it on fire. And in a perfect metaphor of self destruction, the painting is returned to its original beauty and youth while a horribly burned, old and crooked Dorian lies dead beneath it.

The Historian

The Historian is a vampire book unlike any other vampire book I have read. One Hint: the vampires don't glitter. For once, the vampires are not the subject of the romance. For once it isn't a romance, its an actual horror story. Unique! Its more of a mystery novel than anything though, the solid fact that vampires exist isnt believed until 1/3 of the way through the novel, the main characters are regularly people with no inclination to believe in the supernatural at all, so when they are confronted with it...its scary. When unromanticised, vampires are actually horrifying. The premis is that all vampires are escendents of Vlad 'The Impaler' Ţepeş, whos very real and grotestque history is explained throughout the book. Halfway through the novel, before any contact had been made with a vampire, simply finding out that Vlad still exists is terrifying.

The characters travel around the world, often a decade or so after each other, to uncover the truth and find the character that connects them all, the historian, who plays granfather to the main character, mentor to her father and father to her mom. The description of their destinations is beautiful, and the charqacterization is realistic.the author created a real portrayal of people would react to learning of the existence of vampires. On the bad side, for me the book really dragged. It seemed to inch along where it should have been flying, and I still have yet to finish it. I am going to, because it does have its hooks in me, but it might take awhile.

The Death of Ivan Ilych

...and other short stories, by Leo Tolstoy(!). I haven't even finished the first story in this book of shorts by Tolstoy, but I have been thinking about it since I started it. I didn't start reading Tolstoy to expecting to enjoy it. I started it to challenge myself. I have heard a lot of people speak in equal awe of his talent and tediousness. But the book i stumbled upon (on your shelf) is a book of short story's, and i can never resist a book of short stories. I would be willing to bet its a very appropriate median for an author who takes up chapters describing what might have been in the corner of the room, had it not been shadowed. So, the first story revolves around an unlikely romance between a seventeen year old girl and 37 year old man. For the first half whether or not they will even have a romance is left up in the air for the reader, so when they finally, against all odds, are married I thought it was the end. But it wasn't, and I believe that is where my feeling of foreboding began.

“If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.” Stopping a story at all for Leo Tolstoy is obviously very difficult, and the happy couple were described living contentedly in the country side for so long that the main character, the 17 year old young wife, grew very bored, and insisted they visit 'society'. The rest of the story describes every single moment which contributes to their falling out of love, which the characters are ignorant of until after its happened. I wanted to look away, but I had to keep reading. Tolstoy notices things about human interaction that i doubt anyone else has ever consciously registered. In this case, his endless love for detail makes the story. I still hate him for putting me through the slow motion wrecking of their marriage, but maybe hell make it up to me in the next story.

Short Fictions and Wonders: Fragile Things

'Fragile Things' is just as original and creative as all of Neil Gaiman's work, meaning very. I was excited to come across his book of short stories because I love the instant gratification of short stories. They take no commitment to read but give all the satisfaction and excitement of the ending. Often, they are wilder, more daring than full books as well. Neil Gaiman gives short stories his own twist.

His books are never planted firmly in reality, and his short stories soar away from it. One story is told from the point of view of October, one theorizes that the demons who torture in hell are simply the full circle transition of humans who have been sent there and tortured into the demons themselves, and another tells the story of Narnia’s Susan, who wonders why she was kept from Narnia in her old age. Neil Gaiman is the tricky sort of writer who plans out every word to later have relevance.
The only downside was that they’re in book format, and I inhaled the whole book in 2 days, and missed all those subtle Gaiman nuances.

My favorite story, which I did re-read, is entitled 'Harlequin Valentine' It begins with the trickster 'Harlequin', from the Italian Commedia dell'art, literally pinning his heart to the door of his obsession, the lovely Columbine. She pockets the heart in a Ziploc bag and Windex’s her door, and then proceeds to run errands and run into the disguised columbine throughout Valentines Day. She at last enters a diner, and requests a bottle of ketchup, hash browns and sneak knife, and eats poor Harlequins heart. She then pulls Harlequin into the street and claims his mask and cane, becoming harlequin as he fades into a bewildered human busboy only taking a smoke break outside the diner. I was pretty devastated at this point, but all's well that ends weird, apparently: he is ushered back inside and notices a plate with just one bite of meat left, and for reasons unknown to him, eats it, dropping one splatter of ketchup on his sleeve which forms a perfect red diamond, the harlequin trademark. And whistling, he goes to work.

I plan on re-reading all the stories when I have the chance, and am being Harlequin for Halloween. In conclusion, I never had a chance not to like this book, its Neil Gaiman. He does get a bit melancholy at times though, his stories rarely end on the fantastical note he uses throughout his fiction, and Gaiman seems to have a phobia of happy endings.
Next up: Octavian Nothing, The Best Book in the Known Universe
Aka
Should I Start Choosing Books I Can Make Up At Least One Complaint For?

A Movable Feast

I realized that I have only done one non-fiction so far, so I chose Ernest Hemingway’s 'A movable Feast' which actually, I read this summer. I was in a bookstore on a trip with my grandmother, who was already becoming suspicious of the quality of books I read (shed spotted my Sandman graphic novel) and when I held up Sedaris's 'When you are engulfed in flames' hopefully, she decided officially that id been reading 'immoral books' and cleaned the store out of its Hemingway selection. I don’t really know what her reasoning behind that was, but I know better than to argue with it. She later found out I had read 'The Fountainhead' by Ayn Rand and was pleased, so I have to wonder if by 'immoral' she might have meant 'unimpressive'. The purpose of this paragraph is not to question my grandmother’s motives, as it may seem, but to explain that I really would never have read any Hemingway at all if my grandmother had not, um, 'encouraged' it.

So I started reading movable feast without a lot of anticipation, but once I opened it, I actually didn’t put it down. I read it in one afternoon, because Hemingway is an easy guy to read. Not easy as in unchallenging, easy as in very good. Probably it was all the hype, but he just struck me as a really great writer. Also, as the most impressive drinker EVER. And kind-of annoyingly self righteous, but GREAT WRITER. I think. A movable feast is a Hemingway’s auto biography of the time he spent in Paris with his first wife, his 'starving artist' years, although it has been proved that he was well off during those years.

The truth is, I’m still unsure of how I feel about this book. First off, I really don’t feel qualified to judge Hemingway on any level, and second off...He annoyed me. His writing didn’t annoy me, but the oh-so-effective and descriptive prose didn’t do much for me when I wasn’t sure about the main character. Literally, Hemingway himself annoyed me.
Maybe I’m just sore about how he treated F.Scott Fitzgerald, whose characterization I for some reason became attached to during the book.

This is probably the most superficial book review of any Hemingway novel ever, but what I really came away with was a sense of awe and disbelief in Hemingway’s drinking ability, and love for the title itself 'A Movable Feast', a very creative and beautiful metaphor for Paris.

So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish

As it is printed on the cover, 'so long and thanks for all the fish' is the fourth in the increasingly inaccurately named Hitchhikers Trilogy. I had read the first two Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy books, but not the third, when I started the fourth, and I was a little afraid of being lost in the plot. Luckily, the reader can flip any of the books to any page, any paragraph and have about the same level of comprehension and confusion as someone who’s read the whole series religiously. About every other paragraph is satirizing some common issue, in fact the entire premise, that earth is destroyed and Arthur Dent, normal and unobtrusive descendent of the apes, must fend for himself as hitchhiker in the Galaxy. The day earth is destroyed Arthur is protesting the demolishing of his house to put up a bypass by laying in between his house and the bulldozer meant to destroy it, though the demolisher Mr.Prosser points out:
"Some factual information for you. Have you any idea how much damage that bulldozer would suffer if I just let it roll straight over you?"

"How much?" said Arthur.

"None at all," said Mr. Prosser.

Arthur’s house does get demolished, and later that day, so does planet earth, on account of a hyper space bypass that really needed to go straight through where the earth was. Arthur escapes with his best friend, the alien Ford Prefect, my favorite character, Drunkard and experienced Hitchhiker. Every character is memorable and sympathetic, though the inanimate objects tend to have a lot more character and vigor than the actual characters. The best way to read these books is without any expectations or judgments at all, and all the faith you can muster up. The absolutely impressively, creatively random insanity that Douglas writes always manages to have a purpose, and tie mind-bogglingly (a very useful phrase in describing the hitchhikers trilogy) around to close up the story. Douglas tackles the greatest questions man kind has ever asked, from 'is there life outside of earth?' (yes, duh) to what is the answer to the meaning of life?' (The number 42,) to gods final farewell message (sorry for the inconvenience).
Despite being the most illuminating book ever written, 'so long and thanks for all the fish' also happens to be utterly without meaning, and arguably without a certainly cohesive strand of thought. This is acknowledged appropriately in the last line of the book: "There was a point to this story, but it has temporarily escaped the chronicler's mind."
I love Douglas Adams "Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy" because it is the most feel-good series I have ever read, without any doubt one of the funniest, and ill admit it; they always leave me feeling a little enlightened, with a happy-Buddha smile on my face. So if I'm incomprehensively late on this book blog, it’s because I’m finding it hard to really care about grades when I've made my peace with my world being demolished to make alien transit easier.

Farenheit 451

Fahrenheit 451 surprised me by being more character driven and accessible to the reader than id expected. Fahrenheit reminded me of Kurt Vonnegut and George Orwell in that it’s famous for its message, but the fact that it is a wonderfully written in all other aspects goes unmentioned.
So I loved Fahrenheit 451, but Ray Bradbury’s black and white, good and bad view of this dystopian future bothered me. When the three women sat around talking about pregnancy tie author sounds forced when he clears up any of humanity in these women. One defends having children with " ". She has to mention that her doctor says she doesn’t need a c-section when she chooses one? I found that sort of characterization unrealistic, which made it harder for me to really get into and believe in the books message, but overall the author does an amazing job of writing a believable dystopian warning.
I enjoyed the first few chapters the most, in which Montag meets Clarisse, and the transformation of Montag from brain dead to caring. My favorite part of the book, and the part where I decided I was going to like this book, is when Clarisse asks "Have you ever noticed that rain tastes like wine?" and leaves, and Montag tastes the rain himself. I think it is a perfect initiation for Montag into the role of protecting instead of burning books.

Sharp Teeth

I picked up 'Sharp Teeth' by Toby Barlow mainly because Nick Hornby and Christopher Moore gave it good reviews, but also a little bit because it is about werewolves. I cannot resist werewolves. However it follows much more in the footsteps of 'Steppenwolf' by Herman Hesse than traditional werewolf fare, the were bit being a metaphor for escapism. Once again having stumbled into a book focusing on humanism I was proud of myself for my uncanny ability to pick books about humanism, until I realized that very few books do not revolve around human problems as most writers and readers, are human. And that if I were to find one it would probably be in my stupid werewolf book. That was my revelation of the day.

I realized I was going to like 'Sharp Teeth' before I started the book, on the authors quote page. The quotes were as follows:

'There is no document of civilization that is not at the same time a document of barbarism.'

By Walter Benjamin, and

'His hair was perfect.'

By Warren Zevon.

These quotes sum up 'Sharp teeth' well, the 'werewolves' interact in every way (enemy, lover, best friend, betrayer, etc., most play more than one of these roles) their wolf selves immolating the actions of their human selves. Their struggle is much more the internal fight to care that what they fight for is immaterial and let go than the gang wars between the packs themselves.
Toby Barlow writes in free verse, which helps emphasis his rhetoric, I caught the main metaphor many more times than I would have had he not devoted entire lines to a single word, etc. The story line flows.

All the characters live in Los Angeles, most are Mexican immigrants. The werewolves form multiple gangs, "Packs", that fight each other for territory and survival, and Barlow spares the reader no pain from the deaths. The book is told from a rotating perspective of most of the characters, and culminates in a giant battle that leaves two survivors (who they are a big surprise). 'Sharp Teeth' shatters the usual villain-hero archetype, be3cause the reader is forced to see from every perspective I sympathized with all the characters and wanted all of them to win. The kicker is that the only way they survive is by killing the other side. This no-win scenario drew me in and broke my heart multiple times, but I wouldn’t change it.

When You Check In The Hotel Room

Note: I was reading "When You Are Engulfed In Flames" by David Sedaris when you first mentioned an independent reading book so i thought 'hey, non-fiction too! (sort-of)' and i picked it. Unfortunately i also finished it before i began blogging, so for now I am going to break the book up into three parts for each blog and talk about what i expected to happen as i was reading, etc.

Much like his other work, 'Engulfed In Flames' is a series of shorts of David Sedaris's life.I had read Sedaris before i read 'Engulfed', so i had some idea what to expect, namely, anything. Also to never, ever read him in public. Because as anyone who has read Sedaris will tell you, he is a very, very funny man. What really made me choose David Sedaris for this particular occasion is that his writing is all about the human experience. Reading his stories you will rarely find a moral, but there is more there than humor. David Sedaris has the guts to write about pieces of the human experience that most people are to ashamed or unobservant to admit even exist, and if they do, they certainly don't apply to themselves. That's why Sedaris rings true, that's why he is so funny, and that's why i should get a great grade on this reading blog even though its a day late and i chose a kind of inappropriate comedy as my independent reading book.